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Topic: Introducing the Sparck Moto FB-11 (Read 25466 times)

So the off-board relay, run by your key switch or toggle or RFID or whatever, controls the power main from the battery to the switched circuits, and a separate lead from the battery supplies the always-powered circuits?

This looks awesome!!

More or less, yeah.

eyhonda and I are still hard at work nailing down final specs. Currently looking at enclosures and the prototype will (hopefully) be tested in the next couple of weeks.

Here is my thoughts on this. I live in Canada and I'm not sure what the weight or what shipping would entail but at a price tag of $150 I would probably not buy this just due to exchange rate and shipping details.

Nothing too specific just yet as we're still nailing everything down, but ballpark estimates put our costs at around $65 to $70 per unit (which includes shipping cost within the USA, international shipping will obviously cost a bit more), and that's if we produce 50+ at a time. Costs drop a bit more if we can get closer to 100 units per production run, but rise drastically if we don't hit the 50 mark (we're talking over $100 per unit if we can't break 30).

The reason for this high cost is pretty simple, though: We're doing all of the design and production here in the USA using circuit boards and electronics enclosures that are also designed and manufactured in the USA. The assembly is going to be hand-done by eyhonda. We could probably have this done in SE Asia for a fraction of the price, but that's not really what this is about. I'd rather have to charge a bit more (and still earn a bit less) to keep this product as domestic as possible. Yeah, things like the wire, fuses, and relays and stuff are made elsewhere and imported, but the majority of this thing is made here, by hand, and that costs extra.

To me, that's worth it, and I hope it's worth it to some other folks, too. This isn't about just bringing a new product to market. This is about loving what we do and taking pride in it. It's about showcasing possibilities while providing something to the community that supports us.

That said, it's still important to provide good value for money and we remained focused on that aspect of the business, too.

So what we have here is a situation where everyone can benefit. Eric (eyhonda) and I have been tossing around the idea of a pre-order or kickstarter-like setup. For those not following the math in the first paragraph, getting 50 of these units produced is going to cost about $3500 up front. And that's doesn't even count the time invested in getting this going or seeing any kind of return. $3500 is break even just on materials.

That said, if we can get 35 people to pre-pay at $100 per unit, then that covers production costs and still leaves a few units that we can sell at retail price. I'm just thinking out loud, though... Pretty certain we're going to have to go with a pre-order scheme of some sort in order to make this happen, but the details still need to be hashed out...